‘Everyone always talks about the C♯ minor Sonata!’ exclaimed Beethoven in a moment of exasperation. And, confronted with the vast literature on this sonata, it seems that everyone has continued to talk and write about the ‘Moonlight’ from the composer's day to our own. Why add to that body of work? First, most of the material on the sonata is inaccessible to all but the most dedicated researcher, and there is currently no monograph on the work in English. Second, there has been much recent scholarly work on Beethoven's first decade in Vienna (1792–1802), and advances in our understanding of the composer's early career are bound to change the way we perceive the works he wrote around the turn of the century. In response, this study engages in a reassessment of the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata's place in Beethoven's work.

To do so it has been necessary to emulate the sonata and break with a tradition. Unlike the other Cambridge Music Handbooks this book focuses neither on a single work nor on a complete repertoire. My decision to discuss two sets of sonatas dating from 1801–3 has been motivated by historiographical as well as critical factors. The efficacy of perceiving Beethoven's life in early, middle and late periods has been challenged by Beethoven scholars in the last few decades, but it is still universally recognised that the years 1801–3 were crucial for his development as a composer.